more than anything, im happy this franchise is over. some other reviewers will say that this didn't live up to the masterpiece that was the original series, or that this is not the ending, as nge ended in 1997 and this is noncanon bullshit. let me say this: if you like the original eva, i do not respect you.
the original evangelion was a wet dream written by a man who had just taken his first psychology class and fell into a bromance with sigmund freud. the story is not deep and symbolic, its convoluted and full of holes. the show treats you like an idiot
...
that cant understand basic development and storytelling and then forces underaged tits down your throat over and over and over.
i hated the original evangelion. i hate the rebuild slightly less. my main fault with the original series was the lack of concise characters. in the first two films, i felt this rebuild did a really good job establishing the characters and motivations that the original had lacked. they dropped the ball in 3.0, but i think ended up coming back around in this movie.
misato definitely improved from the last movie, and near the end seemed to actually be back to an understandable and likable character. rei became one of my favorites after her time in the village, and i truly was sad to see her go. i don't think her going through the same sort of humanization development again was redundant, as i've someone else put it, i think it was nice to watch and literally what else can you do with her character. there is no other way for her to develop.
asuka in this movie was as asuka as she could be, which means i kind of despised her, but i respect her character. she wasn't as poorly written in this version as she was in the original, and way more of her actions made sense. you could attribute this to her just being "older", but i would like to say its just better writing.
the good characters is where my praise for this movie basically ends.
lets talk animation. im not one of those people who base the merit of a work solely on the animation. i also dont loathe the idea of cgi, i watched and greatly enjoyed ajin. however, the eva battles in this movie had so much cgi and so much going on, i couldnt tell at all what was happening. in a well choregraphed action scene, it should be pretty obvious what the action is.
i also feel that the super realistic movements of the evas in this new version, specifically in the fight between shinji and his dad, just looked stupid. you can't watch this rebuild without seeing the original, theres just too much that wont make sense, and it felt like the first two movies kept with similar styles to the 90s series for the sake of the fans who loved the original. 3.0 threw that away a bit, and this movie destroyed it even more. by making the evas move so seamlessly they feel even less real, and im completely pulled out of the scene. i get it, the animators have to do what they have to do, but to have lazily and poorly done cgi in this movie that is supposedly the culmination of all of eva?? you could have done better.
another thing on the list of bad things in this movie; the worldbuilding. i had no idea what was going on for most of the finale, because there was literally no worldbuilding establishing this new post time skip world. its never explained how anything works, what the significance of things are, what the hell all these new terms mean. this just adds to more confusion in an already convoluted story, but i know all the eva fans are just going to call me stupid. heres the thing though: if you cant understand a piece of media without supplementary materials, its not good media. i didn't not understand it because im stupid and uncultured, its because the movie is poorly made.
now onto shinji. fucking shinji. i absolutely love the boy, and im a bit torn, because im very happy to see shinji actually functioning and standing up for himself, but its also very unrealistic given that he was literally catatonic days prior. as someone who struggles with severe depression, i do understand the depressive epsiodes can sometimes end as quick as they come on, but considering shinji was also experiencing major ptsd... he did not just get over his past in a few days of sulking. truthfully though, they wrote themselves into a hole after kaworus death and i didn't think they were going to pull out of it at all, so ill give them a bit of kudos there.
shinji goes from being a nonfunctioning and nonverbal depressed little piece of trauma on one day, to being able to pilot an eva in the middle of the apocalypse, talk down the absolute maniac that is his father, And give all of his friends free therapy on the next. how realistic.
i see the parallels with the original with shinji being the one to provide aid instead of the other way around, and i respect that, i just think there could have been a better way to get there instead of shinji just suddenly growing out of Major Trauma.
mari time. who the fuck is mari. i will say, i love her. shes a feral beast and i respect that, and i would die for her. but where the fuck did she come from. viewers have no reason to care at all about her but suddenly shes integral to the ending. just give her some motivation or reason to care so much and ill accept it, but come on.
and onto the finale of this review, the ending. i finished this movie a solid 25 minutes ago now, and im still trying to decide what my opinion on the ending is. im pretty sure i didn't like it. im torn again, as its really nice to see shinji happy and actually living for the first time in his miserable life, but also, it feels like a cop out. its a better ending than the original for sure, and i like the message of it. no matter how bad things get or whatever bad things happens, it will get better and life will move on. its nice, and the shot slowly morphing into what i have seen is the directors home town is a really nice touch, and im happy for the director being able to spread this message, but also, a work should not be reliant on you knowing the personal details of the director.
the ending was nice and i wont lie that it made me happy to see shinji grown up and happy, but it was abrupt and almost flippant about the horror that occurred throughout the last god knows how many hours ive spent watching this.
conclusion: the rebuild fixed some of the problems of the original, but in the end, ended up crashing and burning in a slightly less firey fashion than the original. i stand by my previous ideals to stay away from anyone who says they love evangelion, because theyre either fucked up in the brain, or stupid.
Sep 19, 2021
Shin Evangelion Movie:||
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more than anything, im happy this franchise is over. some other reviewers will say that this didn't live up to the masterpiece that was the original series, or that this is not the ending, as nge ended in 1997 and this is noncanon bullshit. let me say this: if you like the original eva, i do not respect you.
the original evangelion was a wet dream written by a man who had just taken his first psychology class and fell into a bromance with sigmund freud. the story is not deep and symbolic, its convoluted and full of holes. the show treats you like an idiot ... 
Sep 18, 2021
Evangelion Movie 3: Q
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alright lets go.
for context, unlike literally everyone else on earth it seems, i didnt like the original evangelion. i've never seen it as some intelligent masterpiece or what have you, its smart sounding bullshit they threw together week by week because the creator was inspired after learning about sigmund freud. i gave the original a 5, mostly for the first half, because the show completely falls apart in the second. for more context, i actually enjoyed the first two movies in the rebuild. i went in expecting nothing, and i was pleasantly surprised. it seemed that they really got a handle on the characters and ... |
